COURSE UNIT TITLE

: EXPERIMENTAL MOVEMENTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY

Description of Individual Course Units

Course Unit Code Course Unit Title Type Of Course D U L ECTS
AKE 3035 EXPERIMENTAL MOVEMENTS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POETRY ELECTIVE 3 0 0 5

Offered By

American Culture and Literature

Level of Course Unit

First Cycle Programmes (Bachelor's Degree)

Course Coordinator

DOCTOR CARL JEFFREY BOON

Offered to

American Culture and Literature

Course Objective

The great Modernist poet Ezra Pound is remembered for his exclamation to Make It New. Many American poets in the twentieth century did just that in style and expression. This fourth-year elective course will provide students a chronological examination of new or experimental movements in the genre. We shall begin with the groundbreaking work of Pound and the High Modernists, including E.E. Cummings, Ezra Pound, and William Carlos Williams. Having established that foundation, we ll transition to movements that flourished mid-century and thereafter: the Confessional work of Robert Lowell and Anne Sexton; the Beat poets, highlighted by the work of Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac; the Black Mountain School, led by Robert Creeley and Charles Olson; and finally the so-called Language poets, of which Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian stand out. Special attention in the course will be given to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson and their different styles, as their divergence in the nineteenth-century made further experimentation possible in the next century.

Learning Outcomes of the Course Unit

1   1. Students will understand the importance of Whitman and Dickinson to American poets of the twentieth century.
2   2. Students will recognize that individual movements in American poetry influence and feed off of each other.
3   3. Students will focus on one particular movement and poet in their own research, and will present their findings to the class.
4   4. Finally, students will look forward to the twenty-first century and come to conclusions on what kinds of poetic experiment might occur in the future.

Mode of Delivery

Face -to- Face

Prerequisites and Co-requisites

None

Recomended Optional Programme Components

None

Course Contents

Week Subject Description
1 Week 1 Walt Whitman: A Unique American Visionary
2 Week 2 Emily Dickinson: Noticing the Unnoticed
3 Week 3 20th-Century Innovation: E.E. Cummings, Ezra Pound, and W.C. Williams
4 Week 4 Robert Lowell and the Confessional
5 Week 5 Anne Sexton: `A Woman s Time
6 Week 6 Jack Kerouac s `Western Haikus
7 Week 7-8 Allen Ginsberg s `Beat Streets
8 Week 9-10 Louis Zukofsky, Selections from A
9 Week 11-12 Robert Creeley, Selections from For Love Charles Olson, Selections from The Maximus Poems
10 Week 13-14 Lyn Hejinian, Selections from My Life Ron Silliman, Selections from Alphabet

Recomended or Required Reading

Donald Allen, The New American Poetry
Alan Golding, From Outlaw to Classic: Canons in American Poetry
George Hartley, Textual Politics and the Language Poets
Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths
Bob Perelman, The Marginalization of Poetry: Language Writing and Literary History
Ron Silliman, The New Sentence

Planned Learning Activities and Teaching Methods

1. Course lecture.
2. In-class discussion, practice, and preparation.
3. The guidance of independent student research.

Assessment Methods

SORTING NUMBER SHORT CODE LONG CODE FORMULA
1 MTE MIDTERM EXAM
2 ASG ASSIGNMENT
3 FIN FINAL EXAM
4 FCGR FINAL COURSE GRADE (RESIT) VZ * 0.30 + ODV * 0.30 + FN * 0.40
5 RST RESIT
6 BBN Bütünleme Sonu Başarı Notu VZ * 0.30 + ODV * 0.30 + BUT * 0.40


Further Notes About Assessment Methods

None

Assessment Criteria

Midterm:
To gauge students grasp of theoretical concepts related to the field.
Final:
To gauge how well students can put concepts into practice regarding particular poets and movements.

Language of Instruction

English

Course Policies and Rules

1. Students must attend 70% of the classes.
2. Students must participate in class discussion.
3. Students must perform an independent research project.

Contact Details for the Lecturer(s)

Öğr. Gör. Carl BOON
carl.boon@deu.edu.tr

Office Hours

Monday 10-12
Wednesday 10-12

Work Placement(s)

None

Workload Calculation

Activities Number Time (hours) Total Work Load (hours)
Lectures 13 3 39
Preparations before/after weekly lectures 12 4 48
Preparation for midterm exam 1 15 15
Preparation for final exam 1 15 15
Preparing assignments 1 15 15
Final 1 1 1
Midterm 1 1 1
TOTAL WORKLOAD (hours) 134

Contribution of Learning Outcomes to Programme Outcomes

PO/LOPO.1PO.2PO.3PO.4PO.5PO.6PO.7PO.8PO.9PO.10PO.11PO.12PO.13PO.14
LO.144543
LO.23345
LO.33355
LO.433533455